When John Baxter was researching his pioneering study, Science Fiction in the Cinema (1970), he
understandably wanted to find some heroes to focus on; so, properly schooled
in the director-as-auteur
theories of the French film critics, he went looking for directors. Then,
noticing that one man had directed several of the most striking science
fiction films of the 1950s, Baxter found Jack ARNOLD, who has subsequently
been rediscovered and enshrined as a major figure in the history of the
genre.

But if an improperly-schooled Baxter had decided to
look for producers to serve as his heroes (on the grounds that, one might
argue, they are often the true masters of science fiction films), he surely
would have found William Alland. After all, with the exception of The Incredible Shrinking Man, Alland was the producer of all
of Arnold's noteworthy films, and his films employing other directors
include two marvelous productions, This
Island Earth and The Colossus
of New York, as well as other capable efforts. Of course, there
are also a few embarrassments in his résumé, but the same is true of Arnold.

Alland began in radio, working for Orson Welles's Mercury
Theatre, and followed him to Hollywood to play the reporter in Citizen Kane (1941), for which he seems best
remembered today. However, after appearing in a few more films, including
Welles's Macbeth, Alland
gave up acting to become a full-time producer in the 1950s. At least in
the case of This Island Earth, which I have studied at
length, Alland was an active, hands-on producer who kept an eye on all
aspects of the production, demanded script revisions to eliminate an unwanted
political subtext, and called upon Arnold to direct the climactic Metaluna
scenes when novice director Joseph NEWMAN didn't seem up to the task.
He also insisted on the incongruous inclusion of the monstrous Mutant,
to the chagrin of everyone else involved in the film, but he undoubtedly
felt that having such a colorful alien available for publicity pictures
would help at the box office, as it probably did. Indeed, "reasonably
dignified science fiction films with a monster to attract the kids" would
serve as a good general description of the best films he made with Arnold,
It Came from Outer Space,
Creature from the Black Lagoon,
Tarantula, Revenge
of the Creature, and The Space Children, as well as his films
with other directors. Certainly, the unique and powerful This Island Earth must be regarded primarily
as a producer's triumph; The Colossus
of New York is a hypnotically involving morality play involving
a dead scientist brought back to life as an immense robot, driven by an
emphatic score and a father-son relationship sensitively explored by screenwriter
Thelma SCHNEE; The Deadly Mantis
and The Land Unknown are
unpretentious and entertaining exemplars of, respectively, the giant insect
film and the dinosaur film; and The
Creature Walks among Us has effective moments, although it
is generally a lesser film than its Arnold-directed predecessors—not
due to inferior direction, however, but because the decision to transform
the Gill Man into a land creature wrested him away from the chillingly
poetic aquatic environment of his earlier appearances. Of all of Alland's
productions in the 1950s, only the lethargic horror film The
Black Castle and the inane underground adventure The
Mole People are completely indefensible.

However, as the 1960s approached, Alland's career fell
apart. After a forgotten venture into television, he chose to produce
and direct a lame teen-exploitation film starring Paul Anka, Look in Any Window (1960), then somehow got
involved with The Creeping Terror,
regularly and properly denounced as one of the worst science fiction films
ever made, featuring a ludicrously unconvincing alien menace whose story
is told entirely by tedious narration because the film's soundtrack was
lost. At the relatively young age of fifty, Alland then apparently vanished
from the public record until his death thirty years later. I have searched
the Internet for more information on his career, but online databases
that routinely provide detailed biographies and filmographies for even
the most undistinguished actors and directors never provide comparable
information on producers. Such attention, one supposes, is only given
to heroes.